[T]he relentless note of incipient hysteria, the invitation to panic, the ungrounded scenarios–the overwhelming and underlying desire for something truly terrible to happen so that you could have something really hot to talk about–was still startling. We call disasters unimaginable, but all we do is imagine such things. That, you could conclude mordantly, is the real soundtrack of our time: the amplification of the self-evident toward the creation of paralyzing, preëmptive paranoia.

[T]he relentless note of incipient hysteria, the invitation to panic, the ungrounded scenarios–the overwhelming and underlying desire for something truly terrible to happen so that you could have something really hot to talk about–was still startling. We call disasters unimaginable, but all we do is imagine such things. That, you could conclude mordantly, is the real soundtrack of our time: the amplification of the self-evident toward the creation of paralyzing, preëmptive paranoia.

– Adam Gopnik –

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